New Delhi, July 13 -- hundreds of people flooding Times Square, phones raised, catching Mewtwo together in the middle of the city. Game companies release promotional videos that depict a world their product cannot produce. This one became a standing joke in gaming circles because it showed a scale of real-world gathering that no mobile game had ever come close to achieving.

On July 10, Pokemon GO did it.

More than a thousand players descended on Times Square in midtown Manhattan as part of the game's Road of Legends promotion, according to Wired, with the draw being a Super Mega Mewtwo raid available only at that location, at that time. The crowd was not a coincidence. It was the product of ten years of infrastructure: the raid mechanic...